Elite Embroidery Online Storefront
Elite Embroidery is a business that primarily works by word of mouth and using an established customer base. However, to continue to grow the business, they are looking to expand into an online storefront. This storefront is going to be an entirely separate entity from the original business. I am in charge of the entire design, including both the layout and brand identity. This design needs to be responsive across all platforms, including mobile, tablet, and desktop.
Audience and User Flow
The main goal of this new storefront is to sell unique, limited time shirts. Every month there will be new designs in a limited quanity. The client has stated that she wants to appeal to a younger customer base. We surmised that our main target audience were young adults ages 16-30. I created a user persona and a simple flowchart to help me begin my design.
Wireframing and Prototyping
User Testing
To get feedback on the design, I conducted a usability study. With this study I aimed to answer 3 main questions:
• Is there a good, efficient user flow?
• Are there any design oversights that cause annoyances for the user?
• Is the process quick and easy to understand?
Participants were given a list of tasks to complete, then observed by the researcher. After completing these tasks, participants took part in a short interview. This entire process took 10-15 minutes for each participant. The study had 3 participants. I was able to get some good insights from these interviews and fix a couple design oversights.
Responsive Design
Now that I had revised the mobile version a couple of times, I decided to tackle the tablet and desktop versions of the storefront. Converting mobile to tablet isn’t too bad; while you can change some things around to utilize the extra screen space, a lot of the design can stay the same. Desktop is a bit tougher, because it’s so different from mobile that it requires almost an entire redesign.
Tablet Wireframes
Desktop Wireframes
Surface Compositions
Coming up with the visual identity of this project was a little tough for me. Usually I am working with an established brand and so I take inspiration from their other products and ensure it's cohesive with their brand. But since Elite Embroidery wanted a rebrand, I was able to create everything myself. It took me a couple different tries but eventually I found a design that I liked.
Looking Back
This project was my most recent project, and is also the design I am the most proud of. It was really great to look back and see just how much my little changes improved my design with each iteration. The usability study was also helpful, and provided great insight into design oversights that I needed to fix. If I could continue to work on this, I would do another round of user testing with my high fidelity prototype. I'm sure there are more things I could improve in my design. That being said, I'm still proud of the way it turned out, and it was a great learning experience for me.